Some Legends
by Doommonger 22
Summary: "Some legends are eternal, some legends die out but the best legends evolve." Set post TDKR so contains spoilers. Oneshot.


**Summary:** "Some legends are eternal, some legends die out but the best legends evolve." Set post TDKR so contains spoilers. Oneshot.

**Disclaimer:**I do not own the Batman franchise, a fact which makes me very sad.

**Author's Note:** As always, please read and review.

**Some Legends…**

_Some legends are eternal, some legends die out but the best legends evolve…_

When he'd found the mysterious, bat-infested cave thanks to the instructions left to him by Bruce Wayne, John Blake had known what he was meant to do. He'd known it was his destiny. The 'Bat Cave' was impressive, if in need of a few modifications to make it more suitable to its new owner. Access had been an issue – if he had to sneak through an orphanage to get there every time he had to fight crime, eventually someone was going to notice. The waterfall was a better option, but Blake didn't really want to end up getting soaked every time either. In the end, the cave had provided its own answer.

An old storm drain led to a long-forgotten vent a good way from the former Wayne Manor. It was hidden from view and judging from the rust, no-one had opened it in years. It was good enough. Over the course of a couple of weeks, Blake had widened the tunnel and opened up the vent at the other end. It wasn't perfect, but just as the Batman had to change, so too did his home.

Blake had found one of the Batman's outfits as well. While he wasn't sure exactly what sort of technology he was looking at, he guessed that the suit he had found was a slightly older model than the one that Wayne had been using before he died. The armour looked pitted and scarred from numerous fights and tears in the cape suggested it had seen better days. Blake was a cop, not a technician. He had no idea what half of this machinery did; let alone how to go about fixing it. The best place to go to find out was, of course, Lucius Fox, the technical genius who had built the thing in the first place. But Blake didn't want to involve anyone else. This was going to be his fight and no one else's.

He remembered talking to Bruce Wayne as he'd been driving him home one day. He remembered how Bruce had told him about the reasoning for wearing a mask. It wasn't just to conceal your identity – it was to protect those people that you cared about. Blake wasn't married and he had no family as such. There was nobody waiting for him when he got home. Technically, he didn't necessarily need the mask. There was no one he needed to protect and the identity of his crime-fighting alter ego was not an issue. He didn't care how many people knew that he was Robin John Blake. He would take what life threw at him as it came – he always had. But something made him pause before he discarded the idea of the mask completely. Maybe it wasn't just the concealment side of things he had to look at. The mask was made from the same lightweight Kevlar as the body armour and would be useful protection for his head. But more than that, it was a symbol. The idea of a masked vigilante didn't seem the same when the vigilante in question was not masked and everyone in the city knew exactly who he was and, undoubtedly, where he lived. No, Blake wanted to change the legend of Batman, not discard it completely. The mask would stay. But that didn't mean that he wouldn't make some modifications to it first…

The cape was another sticking point. It was in such a poor state that Blake didn't think that it would be able to perform at anything close to its peak efficiency, if at all, and he had no idea how to fix it – he could sew up a hole in his sock as well as the next guy but Kevlar memory weave was a whole new ball game and he doubted anyone from his old Gotham Police unit would be able to fix this. Except maybe the Commissioner, who had a plethora of talents which Blake would never have pegged the aging man for possessing. Realising that he couldn't fix the cape, and with an extensive collection of superhero movies at home telling him in no uncertain terms that wearing a cape only got you sucked into jet engines, Blake decided to forgo that particular part of the outfit. After all, the famous cat burglar Selina Kyle hadn't worn a cape and she'd been able to perform all kinds of ridiculous stunts that even Batman would have thought twice before trying.

The armour plating of the costume itself was definitely staying – through news reports and word of mouth, Blake knew some of the fights and near-death experiences that Bruce Wayne had gotten into and he didn't want to be caught unprepared. The costume was a bit bulky though and being unused to wearing it, Blake found that it impeded his mobility. He decided to thin it down a bit, and remove some of the unnecessary protection to lighten the suit and make it easier to wear. At first, he had attempted to simply pull the suit apart with brute strength, but it had been designed to stop bullets and knives, so one man's fists definitely weren't enough. He had rummaged through a rather sophisticated toolbox he'd found in the cave, discarding all sorts of high-tech and very unusual looking tools before finding a suitably unsubtle hacksaw. It would do the job, but it wasn't going to look pretty afterwards.

X

"You know, I wondered how long it would be before I found you down here."

The voice made Blake start and he whirled to face the speaker with his Gotham City Police Department-issue Glock 17 pistol in one hand, the hacksaw in the other. Despite the fact he had retired, Commissioner Gordon had let him hold on to the gun, a fact Blake was becoming increasingly grateful of.

Alfred was entering the cave, descending via the left mechanism that connected the cave to the manor-turned-orphanage. Blake wasn't sure how Alfred had gained access to the cave or even how he knew it existed but he realised he probably shouldn't have been surprised. Alfred Pennyworth had been Bruce Wayne's loyal butler for his entire life and if anyone was likely to know of his daring escapades as the caped crusader, then it would be Alfred.

"You were expecting me?" Blake asked, lowering the gun. As he did so, he glanced at his watch. It was 2:45 in the afternoon which meant he'd been there for over three hours working on the costume. Alfred shrugged.

"Someone needs to take up the mantle now that Master Wayne has gone. And in case you haven't noticed, Mr Blake, I am not as young as I used to be." Blake chuckled as he turned back to the suit. The Kevlar was starting to part in places, but he couldn't help but wonder whether he was doing more harm than good with the hacksaw. Alfred cleared his throat as the lift reached the floor of the cavern.

"You know, Master Wayne never intended to return to the world as Batman after that incident." Blake knew what Alfred was referring to – the 'Harvey Dent' incident was still a sore point in the upper echelons of the Police Department, considering it was basically one enormous cover-up. Despite his initial anger at Jim Gordon, Blake could understand the need for deception looking at it all in hindsight. Without the Dent Act there would have been countless criminals loose on the streets and the work of a great man – despite everything Blake still maintained that view of Dent – would have been undone. The Department was still reeling from Bane blowing the proverbial lid off the entire thing, but it wasn't Blake's problem now. He'd quit. Jim Gordon had been prepared to resign as well, but after his crucial role in fighting Bane's oppression and preventing the destruction of Gotham City, the Department had begged him to stay on, a choice Blake was sure they wouldn't regret.

Alfred pulled him out of his thoughts.

"But after everything that had happened, he just couldn't resist one last hurrah."

"I'm sorry." It sounded hollow even as he said it, and Blake wished he could think of something better to say. He had never been good with words and he didn't know Alfred all that well – he had no idea what he could say to console the other man. If it sounded half as clichéd as his previous attempt then it really wasn't worth trying.

"He made his choice, as must we all." Alfred sounded remarkably blasé about the whole thing. Maybe he was in denial, maybe he had simply gotten over the loss or maybe he knew something that Blake didn't… to be honest, the younger man didn't care. Bruce Wayne was dead and gone. The Batman was a different story. Blake stood a chance of reigniting the flames of hope in Gotham. He wasn't going to let it slip through his fingers.

Alfred had reached the workbench by this point, and was watching Blake work with a guarded expression.

"I find the armour unwieldy," said Blake by way of explanation.

"And you decided to go about rectifying this problem with a hacksaw and sheer force of will?" Alfred didn't sound impressed. Blake cast a glance at the blunted saw he'd been using.

"Yeah, that was kind of the idea." Alfred rolled his eyes.

"Master Wayne spent a small fortune funding the development of that costume; Lucius Fox spent countless hours of his time creating it and now you're mutilating it with a rusty hacksaw!" Alfred let out an exasperated sigh and extended a hand. "Give it here."

Amused, Blake dutifully handed over the costume and the hacksaw. Alfred gave the blade a look of utter disdain before casting it back into the toolbox and plucking out one of the most futuristic-looking power tools in the world.

"Wow," said Blake, as Alfred flicked a switch, revealing the item to be some sort of handheld laser cutting device. "They certainly don't sell those down at Home Depot."

X

The laser cutter dramatically sped up the process and they completed in five minutes the job that had already taken Blake three and a half hours.

"So," said Alfred, as he watched Blake circling the cave in his new armour, occasionally throwing an experimental punch or kick. "Is the Batman ready for his return performance?" Blake paused, mid-circuit.

"Not Batman."

"Not Batman?" Blake continued to circle a while before responding.

"Batman's name has been tarnished. Even now that people know the truth about what happened with Harvey Dent, even now that he made the ultimate sacrifice to save Gotham, even though he put all of those criminals behind bars," he paused, "there are still people who despise Batman, and still people who would try to drag his name through the mud. Plus, everyone knows that he's dead. The sacrifice he made to save Gotham will be null and void if he makes a sudden reappearance and I owe it to Bruce to preserve that memory." Alfred nodded slowly, and Blake was glad that his reasoning made sense to someone other than himself.

"So why do all this?" Alfred asked eventually. "Why rebuild the Batman legend if you're not going to use it?"

"Because Gotham doesn't like Batman – it just likes the idea of the Batman."

"I'm not sure I'm still following you," said Alfred, frowning.

"Batman has a history; and bringing him back from the dead isn't going to make that go away. Gotham thinks it needs a hero and it's perfectly right. It just doesn't need Batman. What it really needs is a new hero, one that they can't argue over his allegiance." He paused. "My father once told me something. He said that some legends are eternal, some legends die out but the best legends evolve. The best way I can help Gotham and honour Bruce Wayne's memory is to leave Batman behind and move Gotham into the era of a new hero."

Alfred smiled.

"And in doing so, you make the legacy evolve. It's an excellent philosophy, Mr Blake. But does this new hero have a name?"

Blake grinned and pulled on his newly modified mask. He hadn't spent all of those three and a half hours working on the armour. The new mask didn't cover his entire head, just around his eyes. He'd designed it specially – it obscured enough of his face to hide his identity and protect his head, without adding extra weight or hampering his peripheral vision.

"Well," he said. "What do you think of Nightwing?"


End file.
